f

Call it fatigue, call it frustration, but some of the best brains in the country are fed up.

Australia's leading climate scientists joined their New Zealand counterparts in Canberra for a four-day conference last week, but dark clouds lingered over their discussions.

The theme of the conference was "Australasian weather, climate and oceans: past, present and future". 

And global warming was never far from the guests' lips.

"There is definitely what you would call 'climate fatigue' on the part of scientists," said Dr Andrew Glikson, from the Australian National University's School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-15/climate-change-blamed-for-australi...

Gus: My head is always in the clouds. 

In the Science Magazine July 27, 2018,  there is a comprehensive exposé of people doing — or trying to do — more thorough studies of clouds in relation to global warming.  As noted in most of my articles on the gaseous mix, the behaviour of water vapour in the atmosphere is erratic yet contained within limits. Clouds, rain, clear vapour, humidity, hail and snow change the way the atmosphere behaves, yet the most important determinant in global warming is CO2. The behaviour of water vapour is more in line with “meteorological” phenomenon.

Presently, most global warming models take clouds into account but, although the grid upon which they base this parameter amongst others is quite small — 25 km X 25 km — the resultant of the extrapolations can be slightly out as we know from the first Lorenz computations, a tiny change can affect the result very quickly. 

It’s a bit like having pictures in jpeg, tiff and raw. All the clarity depends on the amount of computing power to accept and develop a better image. A jpeg is an extrapolation where the pixilation can soon interfere with the vision. In sciences, the vision needs to be as close as possible to the raw data, but this demands enormous amount of computing space and permutation power. 

So philanthropy enters the projects: studying clouds influences on climate change and the influence of climate change on clouds. Good luck.  It’s like studying the convections currents in a boiling pan of water.  Passed a certain point, the behaviour is erratic and at normal atmospheric pressure, you can add more heat, the temperature of the water will stay at 100 degrees Celsius until it’s completely boiled out, then the saucepan will heat up fast beyond this. Try the caper with lead inside the saucepan, and the heat will be able to melt the metal.

So various chemicals and elements react differently to the conditions. For example in some industry, water can be “boiled” beyond 700 degrees Celsius, and yet it stays liquid because of the boiler, which is under pressure. This has been the steam engine principle where the water in the boilers are about 150 degrees Celsius.

Back to the clouds. 

Due to the various levels of the atmosphere, temperature and pressure will vary. Due to the various latitudes and continental positions, the water vapour will react differently. We all know this (or we should since we learn this at school). The afternoon sea breezes and the night flow between the land and the sea are easily explained with convection currents. 

The complexities start with various cloud formations. A few years ago, I named the “fluffus” as a new cloud format (has not been taken up yet by the meteorological boffins, but I don’t care) as a cloud being a resultant of warm sea air hitting the land and creating low unshaped clouds that could resemble fog but are not. Fog is usually compact and exists with no wind, while “fluffus” clouds can be pushed along at reasonably high speed by the wind, between 25 and 35 knots, while maintaining a certain integrity — while not being higher than 30 or 100 metres above ground. I believe that this new format of clouds, in Sydney, were the result of unusual atmospheric behaviour due to global warming. 

In the same magazine there is also a summation of a longer article about how Siberia is getting colder while the Arctic is warming up. All this presumed on the new convection currents under global warming which change local conditions. Sydney has had a cold August interspaced with warmer days. All this relates to the vast amount of ice loss, increasing in Antarctica.

So all the weather on the planet is interconnected, including the jet streams. The study in the Science magazine gives us the key uncertainties in regard to calculate global warming from the observed conditions rather than from what we should expect from the principles of physics and chemistry — because the planet is round, has polar and equatorial regions and is submitted to night and day, plus has variability of hemispheric seasons. The planet is not like a test tube, where conditions can be isolated and observed. As well, our observations might be time delay affected. By the time we compute the observations — conditions and resultants have changed. 

So where to now?

With most of the politicians paying no attention to global warming, despite agreements here and there, we’re in trouble. Our head will be in the clouds. For example a change of one degree Celsius in temperature can shift the dew point (condensation point) a few hundred metres up in the atmosphere and due to the change of pressure, the cloud type might change from a stratocumulus to a full blown cumulus, changing the albedo of the area by a few decimal points. This in turn will change the temperature gradients and a mega storm (cumulonimbus) can form, towering to the anvil shape above 35,000 feet up in the atmosphere. Convection currents within and outside the cloud will create conditions from cloudbursts to hail.

Meanwhile global warming is the sum total (and more) of all the local conditions.

But we can extrapolate global warming from previous eras of the planet history and from the physics and chemistry processes. All the other study, like clouds and ice sheet are actually the study of the feedback mechanism which RETARD the full onslaught of the warming process. In the end whether we know how long the delay is going to be EFFECTIVE is academic. There will be a point soon when all this will churn like water being boiled in a saucepan. The convection currents become erratic beyond computation. 

So some of the studies of “conditions” are only there to satisfy our political will to do anything about GLOBAL WARMING. Here it comes.

Picture at top by Gus Leonisky